WORKSHOP | O.C.E.A.N.I.C.A. (Occasions Creating Ecologically Attuned Narratives in Collective Action)
Workshop with Isabel Lewis – ‘On The Wolf’s Trail’ Session 4
22 March 18h-21h
Rua Damasceno Monteiro, 12 r/c, 1170-112 Lisbon
3rd floor, no lift
Free entry, participation limited to 15 people
Register via: hangarcia.production@gmail.com
© Courtesy of the artist.
‘O.C.E.A.N.I.C.A.’ is an invitation to attune to our continuity with the Ocean to transform and articulate a different relation. Lewis asks participants to be careful with the language pertaining to the Ocean, be aware of the questions it poses and open to unexpected findings.
In this piece Lewis takes inspiration from Augusto Boal’s ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’, a set of dramatic techniques which aim to bring to light systemic exploitation and oppression, in order to discover ocean life inside us. She creates a situational choreography where the boundaries between performance and spectatorship fade, and the very real living conditions and labor struggles across society materialize together, and find an interlocutor in the Ocean.
Isabel Lewis has an academic background in literature, dance and philosophy. In New York, she danced for various choreographers before starting to develop her own projects. Based in Berlin since 2009, Isabel Lewis has developed a performative practice that blends voice, dance and music. She has DJ experience and samples sound arrangements incorporating a wide variety of material, which she mixes and weaves together, improvising according to the place and moment shared.
She tends to do away with the spectacular, theatrical effect in order to build a different kind of exchange with those present, without imposing new constraints. Her aim is to create the conditions for an experience of physical well-being, whether working alone or with other performers. Isabel Lewis is interested in the aesthetics of the social encounter. She creates events she calls occasions, and calls herself the host. They can involve all the senses, including the sense of smell, with fragrances composed in collaboration with Norwegian chemist and odor researcher Sissel Tolaas.
‘On the Wolf’s Trail’ Research program curated and mentored by Margarida Mendes
‘On the Wolf’s Trail’ is a programme of sensory practices and lectures focused on decolonial ecology and restorative justice that explores pedagogical formats to debate forms of collective repair, restoration, resilience, and healing. Along four years, sessions will be led by practitioners from the fields of arts, environmental humanities, and post-colonial studies, and embrace topics such as mutualism and reciprocity, working towards the repair ancestral relations.